RAWALPINDI: President Ayub has called upon the nation to take firm pledge “to revitalise and strengthen the spirit of the October 1958 Revolution by rededicating ourselves to the task of making Pakistan a country of equal opportunities for a prosperous and honourable life for everyone — men, women and children — irrespective of colour, caste and creed”.

In a message on the eve of the Revolution Day celebrations the President briefly traced the different phases through which Pakistan has passed since its inception. The emphasis in the message is on economic development which has been the sheet-anchor of President Ayub’s polices.

The October Revolution of 1958, the President said, was a fresh beginning. People chose to part with the hackneyed and the obsolete and started evolving for themselves a new pattern of life consistent with their ideology and responsive to the economic, social and intellectual demands of freedom.

Referring to the reforms in agricultural, economic, social and educational fields enacted in the initial period of the revolution, President Ayub said these reforms “were undertaken so that the basic pattern for minimum economic equality and social justice could be laid and the hundred and ten million people of Pakistan could march on towards planned progress”.

He identified the second phase with the emergence of political institutions with the promulgation of the Constitution of 1962. The new Constitution and the political system adopted in the light of past experiences and the present national requirements, the President said, “is not the final word”.

“The process of trial and error, of adjustments and readjustments has to take place on basis of realistic requirements through the Constitutional means for which machinery exist in the Constitution,” he said.

Published in Dawn October 27th, 2016